Conflicting results in the literature raise the question of how reliable findings from single experiments on pedestrian crowd movements are. An important example is the effect social groups have on crowd egress times from confined spaces where both increases and decreases were reported. We identify only six comparable studies and conduct the first analysis on this topic that integrates evidence from multiple studies quantitatively, accounting for different sample sizes. The aggregated findings suggest social groups increase average egress times but there is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis of no effect. The conflicting results across published studies are thus likely to have arisen by chance, as experiments are statistically underpowered for determining a small effect. We find no evidence for publication bias in terms of findings or statistical power. Our work presents a quantitative basis for discussing the statistical reliability of experiments considering the high context-dependency of pedestrian dynamics.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    A systematic review and meta-analysis on the effect social groups have on the egress times of pedestrian crowds


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2023-01-01




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    Unknown





    Consequence of Turning Movements in Pedestrian Crowds during Emergency Egress

    Shiwakoti, Nirajan / Sarvi, Majid / Rose, Geoff et al. | Transportation Research Record | 2011


    Detection of Social Groups in Pedestrian Crowds Using Computer Vision

    Khan, Sultan Daud / Vizzari, Giuseppe / Bandini, Stefania et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2015


    Social groups in pedestrian crowds: review of their influence on the dynamics and their modelling

    Nicolas, Alexandre / Hassan, Fadratul Hafinaz | Taylor & Francis Verlag | 2023


    Group Dynamics in Pedestrian Crowds

    Gorrini, Andrea / Bandini, Stefania / Sarvi, Majid | Transportation Research Record | 2014